Devil's Due by Rachel Caine Page B

Jazz?”
    “Yeah. Indoors, since you don’t let her out without body armor and the Popemobile. Want to join us?”
    “No, thank you. Somebody’s got to catch up on the work.”
    On her way back to her office, she felt a flash of guilt. That had been a passive-aggressive thing to do, a cheap shot; she’d implied that Jazz wasn’t pulling her weight. And it wasn’t true. Jazz was more than fulfilling her halfof the agreement, even handicapped by the death sentence that they had to assume was still in effect for her. It was hell for Jazz, no question; she was the active one, the one more suited to running over rooftops and wrestling suspects to the ground than having polite conversations over the phone.
    Lucia sat down at her desk and picked up the phone. “Omar? Hey, man. Need a favor. Can you book a room for McCarthy? Nothing too cheap, nothing too expensive. Very bland. Safe house quality. You know what to look for.”
    “For how long?”
    She considered that carefully. The spy in her hated to leave him in one place for long; she was unconsciously considering him a compromised source, she realized. If anyone—say, Detective Ken Stewart—had a grudge against him, leaving him booked at just one location under his own name would be asking for trouble.
    “Listen, could you book him at four places, a week each? Four names, none of them his? I’ll give you cash.”
    “Some things never change,” Omar said, amused. “Yeah. I’ll come up.”
    She counted out bills from a lockbox and wrote out a receipt, put them in a plain white envelope and had it on the corner of her desk when Omar knocked on the open door and strolled in. He was a big man, well-muscled but not bulky. He was also of Arabian descent, and had found himself out of his chosen work in fairly short order after 9–11. Nobody wanted to hire Arabs as freelance security, and Omar stubbornly had refused to give up. He was proud. It was his principal characteristic, and it was something Lucia loved about him. That, and his liquid dark eyes and wicked smile.
    He came in and pocketed the envelope. “You know I’mgoing to get the looks when I do this. The I’m-calling-the-FBI looks. Hell, I’ll be lucky if they don’t shoot me.”
    “Try to, you mean,” she said. “But I can’t hand McCarthy a pile of money. He’d take it personally.”
    “Yeah, you’d never do that yourself—take anything personally,” he said. “Apart from acting like the new guy’s travel agent, is there anything I can do other than hang around in your dungeon, guarding cars?”
    “It’s important work, guarding cars,” she said. “You’re all that stands between me and an oil leak.”
    He kissed his fingers at her and left. She shook her head, smiling. Omar was a good friend, and he’d once been a good lover, but that was long past. It wouldn’t happen again. She’d seen him at his very lowest point, and a man like Omar didn’t forget.
    Better to keep it light and loose, these days.
    She picked up the phone and began the first of the day’s phone calls. By the time she was done with the second conference call, Omar was back at her office door, holding out a series of small key folders marked with the stamp of four popular, ubiquitous, utterly anonymous motel chains.
    “He does anything, I’m going to be very unhappy,” Omar said. “I had to use my own cherished fake ID. And I have no doubt that the clerks are probably alerting the FBI right now. When you hear about a Waco-style raid on a cheap motel, they’re shooting it out with your ex-con.”
    “You’re enjoying this.”
    “Damn right I am. At last I get to act furtive and guilty, as befits my race. The dream comes true.” His words were clever and light, the bitter twist of his mouth was not.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, and meant it. Perhaps she hadn’t been wise to use him, but the truth was, she hadn’t had a surfeit of choices. “Back to work, Omar.”
    “Harsh mistress.”
    “You haven’t